Chapter XVI:  “Reconciled”

Anthony sat with his face buried in his hands, in an attitude of profound dejection.  He was gaunt and haggard and worn to a shadow, and Freda’s gentle, pitying gaze held in its depths nothing but love and tender compassion.

The first rapture of meeting once again had passed.  The exultant joy engendered by a sense of freedom had lasted for several hours.  Anthony had laughed and sung aloud and shouted for joy in the shady alleys of the garden, amid all the blissful sights and sounds of springtide.  He had wandered there with Freda beside him in a sort of trance of happiness, in which all else had been forgotten.  The joy to both had been so keen, so exquisite, that it had sufficed them for the present.

But with the falling of the softened dusk, with the setting of the sun, with the natural and inevitable reaction upon an enfeebled body and sensitive spirit, following upon a severe and protracted strain, Dalaber’s spirits had suddenly left him.  An intense depression both of body and mind had followed, and in the gathering twilight of that familiar room he sat in an attitude of profound dejection, whilst Freda scarce knew whether it were better to seek to find words of comfort, or to leave him alone to fight out the inevitable battle.

“Why did I do it?  Why did I consent?” he suddenly broke out.  “Why did I listen to the voice of the charmer?  Would it have been so hard to die?  Will it not be harder to live with the stain of this sin upon my soul?”

“‘The blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin,’” spoke Freda very softly.

“And I have denied my Lord—­in deed, if not in word,” and he groaned aloud.

“It was an act of submission and obedience,” spoke Freda, using the arguments familiar to her.  “Nor did you yourself cast upon the fire the precious Word of God; you did not deny your faith.  You affirmed—­so they say—­your assent to the doctrines of Holy Church, and did penance for past disobedience.  Is that a matter to grieve so greatly over?”

She spoke very gently, yet not as though her heart went altogether with her words.  Anthony raised his head and broke out into vehement speech, which she welcomed gladly after the long silence of utter depression.

“They made it easy for us.  They sought to win us by gentle methods.  They knew that the most of us loved Holy Church, and were loath indeed to be divorced from her communion.  They did not bid us in so many words to deny those things which we have held—­the right of every man to hold in his hand the Word of God, and to read and study it for himself; but they made us perform an act which in the eyes of the world will be taken to mean as much—­to mean that we acknowledge the sinfulness of circulating that precious, living Word, and are ready to cast it into the flames like an unholy and corrupt thing.